LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

PRESENTED BY 



UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 



Prehistoric Structures 

— OF 

CENTRAL AMERICA. 

WHO ERECTED THEM? 



A LECTURE, 

MARTIN INGHAM TOWNSEND, 

OF TROY, NEW YORK. 



TROY, X. Y. : 

T. HURLEY, PRINTER, HARMONY HALL BUILtHNG. 
1895. 



PREHISTORIC CENTRAL AMERICA 
AND PERU. 



THE ANCIENT GREEK AND ROMAN SCHOLARS 
KNEW OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE 
WESTERN CONTINENT. 

In the earlier existence of the Greek and Eoman 
peoples, knowledge was extremely limited. These 
peoples were without any mode of perpetuating or 
transmitting knowledge until the clays, a little 
more than a thousand years before the Christian 
Era, when Cadmus brought from Phoenecia the 
letters which had been invented and adopted there 
for the representation and expression of articulate 
sounds ; and by the combination of these letters to 
transmit and perpetuate human ideas. There is 
scarce a race of savages in our day where the mass 
of the body politic are as profoundly ignorant as 
were the great body of the Greek people a thousand 
years before Christ. 

Even those men who made such acquisitions of 
knowledge as were possible in that day, could only 
learn from the lips of their imperfectly trained 
teacher, and by travel to those countries which the 
barbarous condition of the world allowed them to 
visit ; and even after the learned men of the Greek 
Islands came to know the power of letters, how 
small must have been the amount of knowledge ex- 
isting in the world, and how slow must have been 
its spread amongst the untaught commonalty of the 
then Greek world i In the day when the Phoenician 



4 



ship Argp made a voyage to Colchis, at the east end 
of the Black Sea. it so fired the imagination of the 
(ireek poets that they dreamed of the voyage and 
composed poems about it for centuries. 

Indeed it was not until the Romans, just before 
the Christian Era, had subdued all the borders i if 
the historic Mediterranean Sea. that free intercourse 
amongst the inhabitants prevailed. Up to that 
period every people, as a rule, carefully guarded all 
knowledge of their own wealth, and of their own 
acts and possessions from the rest of mankind, in- 
stead of making public expositions to attract the 
attention of the outside world to their useful 
achievements, and they sometimes passed laws for 
inflicting the severest punishments upon citizens 
who should reveal to the outside world the loca- 
tions, nature, or extent, or value of their posses- 
sions. 

Still, we glean from the ancient writers the 
following announcements. 

1. That ancient book entitled ''The Book of 
Wonders." ascribed to Aristotle, contains the fol- 
lowing : "When the Carthagenians. who were 
masters of the western ocean, observed that many 
traders and other men. attracted by the fertility of 
the soil and the pleasant climate, had fixed there 
their homes, they feared that the knowledge of this 
land should reach other nations, a great concourse 
to it of men from the various lands of the earth 
would follow, that the conditions of life, then so 
happy on that island, would not only be unfavor- 
ably affected, but the Carthagenian Empire itself 
suffer injury, and the dominion of the sea be wrest- 
ed from their hands : and so they issued a decree 
that no one, under penalty of death, should there- 
after sail thither/' This passage is quoted, not 



merely with a claim that it refers to the Continent 
of America, but for the purpose of showing how 
carefully the Phcenecian people, whether Asiatic. 
Carthagenian, or Spanish, guarded from the great 
world the foreign discoveries which they had made, 
and where their kindred were enjoying prosperity : 
and to enable us to see how little likely their dis- 
coveries would be to come to the knowledge of 
the great mass of mankind. 

2. Let us look for a moment at some of the 
things which the ancient Greek and Latin authors 
have said indicating their knowledge of the exist- 
ence of a western continent. Crates, a commentator 
on Homer, is quoted by authority of Strabo, a very 
learned author of the century before Christ, as 
saying that Homer means in his account of the 
Avestern Ethiopians the inhabitants of the Atlantis 
or the Hesperides. as the unknown world of the 
west was then variously called. 

3. Pliny also 6 : 31-36, locates the western Ethi- 
opians somewhere in the Atlantic. This shows that 
Crates and Pliny believed that the great poet Homer 
believed in the existence of a great continent on the 
western shore of the Atlantic ocean. 

4. Plato says in his Timaeus. Chapter VI. : " The 
sea 4 ' <the Atlantic ocean), "was indeed navigable 
and had an island fronting the mouth which you in 
your tongue call the Pillars of Hercules, and this 
island is larger than Libya and Asia put together, 
and there is a passage hence for travelers of that 
day to the rest of the islands, as well as from those 
islands to the whole opposite continent that sur- 
rounds the real sea. 



5. Humboldt quotes that Anaxagoras, who was 



6 



born five hundred years B. C, and was a most 
eminent Greek philosopher, speaks of the grand 
division of the world beyond the ocean. 

6. Aelian in his Variae Historiae, Book 3, Chapter 
18, cites Theopompus, an eminent Greek historian, 
born about three hundred years B. C, as stating 
that the Meropians inhabit a large continent beyond 
the ocean, in comparison with which the known 
world was but an island. 

7. Aristotle says in Chapters 81 and 85 : "Be- 
yond the Pillars of Hercules, they say that an inhab- 
ited island was discovered by the Carthagenians, 
which abounded in forests and navigable rivers and 
fruits of all kinds, distant from the continent many 
days' sail. And while the Carthagenians were 
engaged, in making voyages to this land, and some 
had even settled there on account of the fertility of 
the soil, the Senate decreed that no one thereafter, 
under penalty of death, should voyage thither/"' 
Aristotle was born three hundred and eighty-four 
years before Christ. 

S. Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in the century 
preceding the Christian Era, says in his Book 5, — 19 
and 20. that it was the " Phoenicians instead of the 
Carthagenians who were cast upon a most fertile 
island opposite Africa, where the climate was that 
of perpetual spring, and that the land was the 
proper habitation for gods rather than men." 

He speaks of the continent, however, at length 
and with great detail, enumerating its fertile valleys 
and navigable rivers, its rich and abundant fruits 
and supply of game, its valuable forests and its 
genial climate. 

9. Pliny quotes Statius Sebosuss in his volume 2, 
page 106, Bohn, as saying that the huo Hesperides 
are forty-two days' sail from the coast of Africa. 



7 



THE PHCENICIAN PEOPLE WERE EQUAL TO 
THE DISCOVERIES ON THE WESTERN CON- 
TINENT, IF WE JUDGE THEM BY WHAT THEY 
ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHED. 

The prophet Isaiah, writing soon after seven hun- 
dred and fifty years before Christ, in the twenty- 
third chapter of his prophecy, gives us a pretty good 
idea of the unlimited commerce and the unlimited 
prosperity of the merchants of Tyre. Among other 
things he says the following, speaking of the City 
" Whose antiquity is of ancient days" He calls 
the City " The Crowning City," 44 whose merchants 
are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of 
the earth." The wealth and luxury of Tyre 
was eternally injurious to the Jewish people from 
the time of their return from Egypt to Canaan to 
the carrying away of Israel to Babylon in the later 
days. The Jewish husbandman, dazzled by the 
luxuries of Tyre and Sidon, was affected as those in 
more moderate circumstances are in later days, by 
the manners and customs of their rich neighbors, 
and were building groves in high places under 
which to worship, as did the priests of Baal in Pal- 
estine, and under the oaks in the northwest of 
Europe, where they acquired the name of Druids. 
They forsook the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
and worshipped Baal and Ashtaroth and Astarte, 
the Phoenician Venus. 

They even sacrificed their children to Moloch, the 
relentless Are god, as Baal appeared in his sterner 
characteristics. But upon the loss of wealth which 
Phoenicia sustained in the wars with Nebuchadnez- 
zar and subsequently wTth Alexander, the Phoeni- 
cians ceased to be conspicuously wealthy and lux- 
urious, and Israel was left to worship that God who 



8 



called their father Abraham from upper Chaldea, 
and who afterwards brought him out of the " House 
of Bondage " in Egypt after having been four hun- 
dred years enslaved there. 

We have now glanced at the widespread influence 
of the Phoenician people over the borders of the 
Mediterranean sea and over the west and northwest 
of Europe. 

Let it be remembered that what we have said 
upon this subject is founded upon authentic evi- 
dence from ancient history and modern fact. 

Let us look for a moment now and see what these 
peoples accomplished through the waters of the Red 
sea and upon the waters easterly of the straits of 
Bab-el-Mandeb. After Solomon had associated with 
Hiram, King of Tyre, and Hiram, the son of Abif, 
the chief of the mechanics who built the temple, 
and become acquainted with the wealth brought 
home by Phoenician ships from the great outside 
world, his spirit of Jewish thrift was excited, and 
he determined to share in the profits of nautical ad- 
ventures. In the first book of Kings, chapter 9, 
verses 26, 27 and 28, we find the following : "And 
King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion Geber, 
which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, 
in the land of Edom. And Hiram sent in the navy 
his servants, shipmen who had knowledge of the 
sea, with the servants of Solomon. 

"And they came to Ophir and fetched from 
thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and 
brought it to King Solomon." In the 18th chapter 
of this book, 11th and 12th verses, we find the fol- 
lowing : ' ' And the navy also of Hiram that brought 
gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty 



0 



of ?ilmug trees and precious stones, and the king 
made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the 
lord and for the king's house, harps also and psal- 
teries for the singers. There came no such almug 
trees nor were seen unto this day." 

In the Second of Chronicles, chapter 9, verses 10 
and 11, we find the following : " And the servants 
also of Hiram and the servants of Solomon, which 
hrought gold from Ophir, brought algura trees and 
precious stones, and the king made of the algum 
trees terraces to the house of the lord and to the 
king's palace, and harps and psalteries for the sing- 
ers, and there were none such seen before in the 
land of Judah." 

In Second Kings, chapter 10, verse 22, we find the 
following: "For the king had at sea a navy of 
Tharshish with the navy of Hii^am. Once in three 
years came the navy of Tharshish bringing gold and 
silver, ivory and apes and peacocks." This navy of 
Tharshish is beyond question the navy of big ships 
manned by Jews and Phoenicians, and the expres- 
sion here used beyond question is used in the sense 
we should use in speaking of a navy of big ships, or 
Baltimore Clippers. 

In Second Chronicles, chapter 3, verse 6, we find 
the following : "And he garnished the house with 
precious stones for beauty, and the gold was gold of 
Parvaim." 

We will not at the present time stop to ask where 
was Ophir, where was Parvaim, where did the 
sailors of Tyre, so skilled in navigation and so capa- 
ble of navigating the western ocean, as we have 
seen them to be, as to make successful voyages over 
2 



10 



to the Orkneys, a distance of some four thousand 
miles from their homes, spend the three years dur- 
ing which they were absent on their voyages from 
the easterly gulf of the Red Sea I Xo Jewish lexi 
con tells us of almug or algum trees ; no Hebrew 
writer undertakes to describe them. But that en- 
terprising publicist, O'Donovan, who for the pur- 
poses of knowledge a few years ago 'traversed the 
Caucasus, crossed the Caspian sea and buried him- 
self for two or three years among the still wild 
tribes of Turkestan, tells us that after his liberation 
from the Turks, and while traveling in eastern Per- 
sia towards the capital, he found a tree which 
attracted his attention because its fibre reminded 
him of that of the Lignum Yita^, which tree the 
natives called " The Yalgam." Here we have Solo 
mon's algum tree with the name scarcely modified. 
Would it be the strangest thing that ever happened 
if these "yalgam," ' 6 almug," or " algum " trees, so 
beautiful as to be unequalled by anything known in 
Palestine, and for that reason set up. as ornaments 
in God's house, should turn out in the day when all 
things become known to be rosewood and mahogany 
from the west coast of Central America, taken on 
board by Solomon's servants on their return from 
Parvaim or Peru and the old mines of Potosi, where 
they had gone for the gold which filled the coffers 
of Solomon. It may be said that such would be a 
long voyage ; true, but not much longer than a voy- 
age to the Orkneys. Authentic profane history 
tells us that between six and seven hundred years 
before the birth of Christ, Pharaoh Necho, King of 
Egypt, built a fleet in the "Red Sea, manned it with 
Phoenician sailors and sent them out upon the 
waters to discover the shape and dimensions of 
the continent of Africa. These sailors passed 
down through the straits of Bab et Mandel and 



11 



clear around the Cape of Good Hope and the 
continent of Africa more than two thousand years 
before Vasco Degama. and coming in through the 
straits of Gibraltar after an absence of about two 
years. Their food supply run low, their supply was 
mainly wheat, they tied up their ships, landed, 
plowed the ground with sharpened sticks, cast their 
bread, not upon the waters, but upon the ground, 
and thus raised a new crop of wheat, preparing to 
supply their wants until they should return to 
Egypt, that eternal land of plenty. 

It will be remembered that for centuries previous 
to the close of the Punic Avars under Hannibal the 
Phoenician people owned and controlled the w T hole 
north of Africa, west of Egypt, and the whole of 
Spain up to the Ebro. and the whole of Cyprus and 
a very large portion of Sicily, and that when the 
ancient writers, and even modern writers speak of 
Spain, the Carthagenians and northern Africa, they 
refer to the people who sprang from the commercial 
cities on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea, 
occupying a territory of not more than one hun- 
dred miles in extent north and south, and extend- 
ing back into Syria not more than fifteen miles, 
whence all these people sprang, and applied to them 
the general term of Phoenicians. 

From the authorities we have quoted we think 
there can be no doubt but that here and there a 
learned man among the Greek scholars had come to 
believe that some eastern navigator had discovered 
a western world exceedingly productive and beauti- 
ful, and that a population of eastern origin had 
sprung up and existed in the lands so discovered. 



12 



IF THE WESTERN CONTINENT HAD REALLY 
BEEN DISCOVERED ACCIDENTALLY, OR OF 
SET PURPOSE, WHAT EASTERN NATION 
WOULD BE MOST LIKELY TO HAVE BEEN 
THE DISCOVERERS OF THIS WESTERN 
WORLD. 

Nineveh and Babylon are never spoken of as hav- 
ing sent even a keel boat out upon the seas. Egypt 
has been called the "Cradle of The Arts" and the 
" Birthplace of Science and Civilization," but Egypt 
never attained the maritime power or skill to enable 
her to navigate the waters of the Mediterranean 
beyond the mouths of her eternal river. 

Greece, afterwards so celebrated for science, art 
and philosophy, was at the day of which Homer 
sung, a mere association of savage groups, engaged 
in wars instead of seeking commercial profits in dis- 
tributing the products of civilized life among the 
nations of mankind. 

And Romulus and Remus had not yet emerged 
from the sheep folds upon the Italian hills. But 
very early in the history of the world, and as stu- 
dents of history believe, earlier than the call of 
Abraham, the interests of mankind had called into 
existence along the eastern shore of the Mediterra- 
nean Sea an active and intelligent population which 
had engaged in commerce as a means of subsistence, 
and were carrying it on with such success as was 
possible in the then condition of the world of man- 
kind A civilization had sprung up at a very early 
period along the banks of the united rivers, the 
Tigris and the Euphrates, and from the Persian gulf 
to Xineveh and Ximroud, where w 7 as produced a 
great variety of articles of necessity and luxury 



13 



unknown to the rest of the world. We all under- 
stand the story told of Aehan, who secreted in the 
floor of his tent a Babalonish garment about four- 
teen hundred years before the Christian era, while 
Israel was battling against Ai See Joshua, Chap. 
8. The children of Japhet had passed up through 
Persia to the Caucasus, and from the Caucasus 
around the Black Sea to the waters of the Danube 
and the Grecian Islands. The luxuries produced in 
the valley of the Euphrates and the Tigris, called 
Mesopotamia, furnished a ready basis for a success- 
ful commerce across the desert by the way of 
Damascus to the shores of the Mediterranean ; and 
it was by this means that a commerce sprang up 
along these shores such as the world had never 
seen, and which rendered the people resident there 
the leaders in all the arts of life, including the art 
of navigation, throughout the then known world, 
a result but twice paralleled on earth, once in the 
middle ages at Venice and once in our own age at 
our magical Chicago. This enabled this people to 
become the leaders of their race down to about six 
hundred years before Christ, when there came that 
terrible war wherein Nebuchadnezzar, by besieging 
Tyre, caused "every head of that people to become 
bald and every shoulder to become pealed/' Tyre 
subsisted after the siege of Nebuchadnezzar, but 
Tyre never attained again the prosperity or in- 
fluence which she possessed at the commencement 
of this memorable siege. She had before this time 
planted two hundred and fifty cities upon the north 
coast of Africa, including the celebrated city of 
Carthage. She had settled and occupied two hun 
dred cities in the territory of Spain, and for cen. 
turies occupied the whole of that country up to the 
Ebro. The Jewish historians speak of Spain as 
Tharshish. Greek writers speak of Spain as Tar- 



14 



tesus. Jewish historians and prophets speak of the 
ships of Tharshish as the most magnificent sea- 
going crafts known to the world, as we for half of 
a century boasted of our Baltimore Clipper. Her 
sailors passed beyond the Pillars of Hercules and 
passed up the northwest coast of France and estab- 
lished their religion, the worship of Baal, or the 
sun, among the simple people of Bretagne so firmly 
and universally that at this day at Carnac, in the 
Morbihan, there stand more Phoenician funereal 
monuments of unknown antiquity thau can be 
found together in any form of religion in any other 
portion of the world's surface. They discovered tin 
in the Scilly Islands, off the coast of Cornwall, and 
wrought those mines for centuries. Those Islands 
were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as 
the Cassiterrides. or Tin Islands. They worked 
both tin and copper mines in Cornwall, and made 
profits on the sale of the products throughout the 
known world. They passed up the British channel 
and through the German Ocean, and in the im- 
mense sand dunes at the mouth of the Baltic dis- 
covered and utilized that beautiful product of the 
primeval forests called amber, which they dug from 
the sand hills. They took with them their priests 
(the priests of Baal) and introduced the worship of 
the sun. and made that worship paramount and uni- 
versal in England, Ireland and Scotland, as well as 
in Bretagne and the northwest of France. So thor- 
oughly has the religion of Baal been fastened upon 
the peoples of these regions that portions of them 
at this day salute the arrival of the Summer Solstice, 
June twenty-fourth, with burning fires, the precise 
moaning of which is forgotten, but through those 
fires in all the early portions of the present century 
the inhabitants have jumped with their little ones 
in their arms, as the phrase goes, on Saint John's 



15 



eve, "for luck.;' The wizard of the north. Sir 
Walter Scott, in his song entitled "Hail to the 
Chief," in the Lady of the Lake, has the following 
when speaking of " Clan Alpines Pine ": 

" Ours is no saplin, 
Chance sown by the fountain, 
Blooming at Beltane," (Baaltime) 
" In winter to fade." 

Indeed the literary men of Scotland very gener- 
ally call the Summer Solstice the Beltane. One 
of the finest of the smaller towns in England even 
to this day bears the name of Belper, (i. e. Baalpeor.) 

They built that wonderful prehistoric open air 
temple, still standing upon Salsbury Plain, and 
bearing the name of Stonehenge, the most wonder- 
ful monument now standing upon the earth's sur- 
face. They built several other circular open air 
temples in the British Islands, and conspicuously 
among them, away up in the Orkneys, above 
Scotland, a very perfect and beautiful one called the 
" Standing Stones of Stennes." 

They visited the Azore Islands, west of Gibraltar, 
out in the Atlantic ocean, and as we learn by 
Chateaubriand's Outretombe, Phoenician coin in the 
last century was found scattered in the soil of these 
Islands. A man who carries his eyes about him 
will rarely enter a large Irish assembly, or an 
assembly of Canadian Frenchmen whose blood 
conies principally from Bretagne, without noticing 
here and there a swarthy complexion surrounding 
intensely bright flashing eyes which speak of Spain 
and Carthage and the blood of warmer climes. 

About one thousand years before Christ, Solo- 



16 



mon. the Prince of Israel, resolved to build a tem- 
ple to the God of Abraham which should exhibit on 
Mount Zion architectural skill and beauty such as 
the world had never seen. The construction of 
that erection was intrusted entirely to the people 
of Phoenicia ; everything was perfected at Tyre so 
completely that " no hammer or instrument of iron 
sounded upon the building" after its component 
parts reached the Mount of God. Even the basins 
that were to be used in the Lord's house were con- 
structed by the artizans of Phoenicia. 



17 



IS THERE ANY EVIDENCE EXISTING UPON 
THE WESTERN CONTINENT SHOWING OR 
TENDING TO SHOW WHENCE THE PEOPLE 
WHO ERECTED THE PREHISTORIC STRUC- 
TURES ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT CAME ? 

FIRST. 

The soil, climate and productions of the Peninsula 
of Yucatan, and that part of Mexico and Guate- 
mala where these prehistoric remains are found, 
are precisely what are described by the European 
writers who speak of the beauty, the loveliness and 
the grandeur of the Hesperides and the homes 
founded by eastern adventurers beyond the western 
ocean. 

SECOND. 

The prehistoric structures found in those regions 
and in neighboring regions are all built on plans 
and patterns borrowed from lands bordering the 
Mediterranean Sea, although the structures seem 
to have followed verbal descriptions rather than 
exact mechanical patterns. 

All of these structures north of Panama seem to 
have been erected for public purposes, and probably 
in connection with the offices of some form of 
religion ; and every structure of them, of which any 
appreciable portion is standing, is built upon or in 
connection with pyramids as perfectly pyramidal 
and regularly constructed as were the pyramids of 
ancient Egypt. Most of these pyramids, however, 
are mere earth mounds, instead of being construct- 
ed of brick or stone as were those upon the banks 
of the Nile. Let us refer to a few of the localities 
where these pyramidal structures are most con- 
spicuous. 
3 



18 

At Copan, situate at the western border of Hon- 
duras, and by the side of the river Copan, is a large 
enclosure, some two miles in extent, bounded upon 
the one side by the Copan river, on the bank of 
which are walls of beautiful cut and fitted stone 
rising to the height of fifty to one hundred feet, 
designed to keep the earth upon that side of the 
river from being carried away by floods. This river 
at this place constitutes one side of a tract of land 
laid out nearly in a square, along the outer sides of 
which, at regular intervals, are constructed, and 
still remaining, a very large number of pyramids 
made of hewn stone evidently designed to outline 
this extended sacred field.. 

This field within, is ornamented with a wealth of 
statuary, monuments and figures of idols, practi- 
cally inconceivable in amount ; but we count this 
statuary of no importance now, as we are confining 
our attention to the tendency of this prehistoric 
people to erect pyramids. For a fuller account of 
this locality we refer to Stephens' Travels in Cen- 
tral America, Chiapas and Yucatan, Vol. 1, Chap. 8. 

At Santa Cruz Del Quiche, within the State of 
Chiapas, Mexico, there exists a pyramid erected for 
defensive purposes, constructed of earth and terra- 
ced as it rises, of enormous proportions ; upon its 
top is a regular fortification upon the top of which 
rises a pyramidal temple above the fortification. 
This structure is particularly described by Stephens 
in the work above quoted, in his second volume, 
chapter 10, page 161, &c. 

At Occasingo in Chiapas, there is a conspicuous 
pyramid constructed of earth, of somewhat exalted 
proportions, upon the top of which is a small pyr- 
amidal temple having over its porch the ornamenta- 
tion which is so common upon the temples of 



19 



ancient Egypt, and occasionally seen in the land of 
Phoenicia, to wit : a winged globe wrought in 
-tone. The globe itself has become loosened, and 
has dropped from its place upon the front of the 
temple but still rests upon the ground before it, 
while the wing to which it was attached remains in 
place upon the temple as perfect as when it was 
first wrought. For a description of these works at 
Occasingo. see Stephens' second volume, chapter 15, 
page 258, &c. 

The same sort of pyramidal structures remain in 
admirable preservation conspicuous at Palenque. 
in Chiapas, where an immense pyramid still exists 
standing in great perfection with an elegant temple 
upon its top. Pyramidal structures and shapings 
are found everywhere at Palenque. See Stephens' 
Work, above quoted, vol. 2, chap. 20, page 337, &c. 

At Uxmal. also in Chiapas, we have another ex- 
hibition of pyramidal structures with temples upon 
their tops. We refer again to the same work of 
Stephens, vol. 2, chap. 25. page 420, &c. 

These remains, to which we have referred, have 
far greater importance in our investigation than can 
be attached to the mere building of pyramidal 
structures. The wealth of sculpture found at the 
places referred to is immensely great and deserves 
the attention of scholars and thinking men to an 
extent greater than we can now devote to them. 

In our view, the people who erected those struct- 
ures possessed a knowledge and civilization far in 
advance of the population that surrounded them, 
and that the surrounding populations to a great 
degree imitated their examples and adopted their 
religion. 



20 



That, as we believe, led to the construction at 
Oholula, a little town now of ten thousand inhabit- 
ants, fifteen miles from Puebla, on the road leading 
from Vera Cruz to Mexico, on the plains of Aiiahuac, 
at the height of 6912 feet above the sea, of that 
immense pyramid of earth still standing, 177 feet 
in height, measuring 1445 feet on either side, and 
ascended by 120 steps. 

There are two other pyramids at Otumba, seven 
leagues north-east of the City of Mexico, and in the 
language of the aboriginal inhabitants, called, one 
"The House of the Sun/' and the other, "The 
House of the Moon.' 7 The House of the Sun is 6S0 
feet square at the base, and 221 feet high. 

On the top of this there was originally erected a 
great statue of the sun. The uther pyramid is 
much smaller but rises to the height of 144 feet, 
and on its top was a statue of the moon. Upon the 
plain about these structures are a number of 
smaller pyramids not necessary to be described. — 
The sides of all the pyramids here constructed cor- 
respond with the cardinal points of the compas. 
The pyramids that we have referred to are all pat- 
terned after those constructed upon the banks of 
the Nile, and are all found about the west border of 
Yucatan, about the north border of Gruatamala and 
south of the centre of the great Republic of Mexico. 

It will be well to remember that the mountains 
and plains of North America cover millions of 
square miles north and east of the country where 
these pyramids have been constructed, and that 
those mountains and plains are covered in many 
places with earth mounds of an almost inconceivable 



variety of forms, and yet the form of the pyramid 
seems to be utterly unknown on the Western Con- 
tinent, except in the narrow region that we have 
delineated. We might, perhaps, be justified in 
asking : From what people on earth could this 
building of pyramids be copied except from those 
dwelling upon the banks of the 2s ile \ 



22 



THE RELIGIOUS BELIEF OF THE PEOPLES WHO 
CONSTRUCTED THE WONDERFUL PREHIS- 
TORIC TOWERS AND TEMPLES UPON THE 
CONTINENT OF AMERICA. 

They were the worshipers of Baal, the god wor- 
shiped by the Phoenicians, and paid their devotions 
to him with the same rites that they practiced 
wherever their influence was effective. 

It will be remembered that Baal was supposed to 
exist and was worshiped as a being of biform 
existence. In his beneficent qualities, as the sun, he 
was supposed to be the author and sustainer of all 
life and the fountain of all pleasures. In his sterner 
character, wherein he was known as Moloch or 
Molech, by the children of Israel, he was the most 
cruel, stern, relentless monster that the imagina- 
tion of man ever depicted, and his votaries every- 
where sought to conciliate him by presenting him 
with the most horrid scenes of human agony. 
Attempts were everywhere made to conciliate him 
by laying human captives upon his altar, and for 
want of captives taken in war, such peaceful citi- 
zens as the priests saw fit to select. 

Human victims were constantly dying upon a 
thousand altars not only in Phoenicia, but in all 
western and north-western Europe. 

It was firmly believed by the votaries of Moloch 
that he could be most readily conciliated by the 
offering of children upon the altars, that he most 
especially delighted in the sacrifice of the first born 
of every family. Men thus offering 4 'the fruit of 
their bodies for the sin of their souls." Early in the 
history of this worship it was deemed sufficient if 



23 



children passed through the fires without the de- 
struction of their lives, but down the ages it came 
to be believed, that if a family would secure the favor 
of this deity, the oldest child of each union must be 
actually roasted to conciliate favor. Even good old 
Abraham who had been called from upper Chaldea 
to receive all the land of Israel for him and his seed 
forever, conceived the idea that God required the 
roasting of the son of Sarah upon the hill of Zion, 
and never relented until a ray of common sense 
enlightened his intellectual vision, after he had 
actually bound Isaac to the altar. 

We have referred to the beautiful monuments 
that still exist at Uxmal, Palenque, Occasingo, 
Queche and Otumba, and to the temples and mon- 
uments still standing there. Upon all these beauti- 
ful structures are engraved in the living stone, or 
wrought in stucco, most striking representations of 
the sun with a huge priest on either side, standing 
with arms outstretched each holding in his hands a 
naked child offering it to the relentless deity. The 
practice of burning human beings as offerings to 
the sun existed very extensively down to the date 
of the Spanish conquest. Showing that the same 
so-called religion which prevailed in western Europe 
before the Roman conquest, was still paramount 
and terribly enforced among these settlers in 
America, though so far removed from the parent 
stock. We have spoken thus far of American 
remains which are found north of the Isthmus of 
Panama, but there are still existing, in the old land 
of Peru, structures which for thousands of years 
have been telling the story of their origin. 

There are all over this land of Peru remains not 
of palaces and temples, but of roads and water- 



24 



courses, showing a mechanical skill such as perhaps 
cannot be found in any part of the earth elsewhere 
as existing as early as these must have been con- 
structed. 

The people who did this work are absolutely 
extinct. Many have supposed that in the popula- 
tion of Central America there is still a remainder of 
the blood of the people who once dwelt there, thus 
rendering the local inhabitants in some degree 
superior to the aboriginal Indians of that country. 
Not so in Peru. It is only from the structures 
which we find and the conditions which attend 
them that, any evidence is found that there ever 
was in Peru, any people superior to the dull Indians 
of the mountains. 

The traditions of the country speak of one Manco 
Capac appearing in the country at some indefinite 
period, and that he and his family descendants were 
rulers for a long course of time, ruling and control- 
ing the business and social life of the population of 
Peru. That blood had been long extinct before the 
Spanish conquest. 

Let us see for a moment whether anything re- 
mains to show what were the religious ideas of 
Manco Capac, and those coming with and descended 
from him. AVe find abundant remains of struct- 
ures and carved columns in the almost desert 
regions of Atacama, in the high lands of what is 
now Bolivia, between Peru and Chili, between 
twelve and thirteen thousand feet above the level 
of the sea. These structures and carved monu- 
ments are largely gathered about the lake of 
Titicaca. At Sillustani on a promontory extend- 
ing into that lake, is constructed a stone circle as an 
outdoor temple, standing more perfect to-day than 



25 



Stonehenge or Stennes, or the structures at Carnac 
in Bretagne. It is undoubtedly au outdoor temple 
for the worship of the sun. See Squires' Travels 
in the Lands of Incas, page 384, &c. 

This, taken by itself, might not prove to a certain- 
ty that this outdoor temple was for the worship of 
the sun, but at Tiahuanuco, in the same work, at 
page 288 to 292 inclusive, we have the whole story 
told as plainly as it could be in a thousand printed 
volumes. Over the entrance to a cemetery is a 
carved monolith, or single stone, on which is the 
following described carving : Centrally over the 
gateway upon this monolith is a well carved figure 
of the sun, and upon the right hand and the left 
hand and below, are sculptured some fifty figures 
of beings with human bodies, and the wings of 
angels as imagined and represented in western 
Asia and in Europe. Half of the angels have 
human bodies, angel wings and the heads of hawks. 
The Romans and the Greeks held Mercury to be the 
god of eloquence and of wisdom. 

Instead of furnishing him with the wings of the 
Asiatic angel, they clothed his head in a cap close 
to the ears with wings extended from the ears, and 
with other wings extended from his ankles. 

It will be remembered that when Paul and Barn- 
abas were upon their great mission through Asia 
Minor, preaching the gospel, the people became 
very much excited at Paul's preaching at Lystra 
and Derbe, and believing that the gods themselves 
had come to them, they called Barnabas, Jupiter, 
and the orator Paul, Mercurius. See acts of the 
Apostles, Chap. 14, 12th verse. 

4 



26 



In the Egyptian economy, Thoth was worshiped 
as the god of wisdom and eloquence, and represent- 
ed as possessing a human body with a hawk's head. 
Both regions representing the hawk as the embodi- 
ment of wisdom among the feathered creation. 
Here at Tiahuanuco, we have the Greek and Egyp- 
tian god of wisdom, furnished with the wings of the 
Asiatic angel, and standing in eternal attendance 
upon the Phoenician sun god. All these figures are 
perfect, as showing the ideas and intentions which 
led to their construction, yet indicating in the 
roughness of the work that they had been con- 
structed by one who was without exact measure- 
ments, probably without patterns, and without the 
means of obtaining either measurements or pat- 
terns. In this cemetery at Tiahuanuco, one will 
find a hundred structures so like the round tow- 
ers upon the south coast of Ireland as strongly to 
awaken one's attention. So that, Manco Capac 
and his descendants were not only sun worshipers 
but very strongly imbued with the ideas which 
originated in the eastern and southern coasts of 
the Mediterranean sea. 

Thus Ave have seen that the prehistoric people 
who built the structures in Central America and 
Mexico, which have in these later days filled the 
civilized world with wonder and admiration, were 
constructed Jby a people whose knowledge of 
science and the arts had reached the same point of 
advancement as had been reached upon the banks 
of the Nile, and in the cities of Phoenicia, for at 
least a thousand years before the Christian era. 
That in the erection of these structures they had 
implicitely followed the patterns, even to their 
ornamentation, of structures and ornaments then 
known and adopted in ancient Egypt. That their 
religious beliefs were identical with those which 



27 



prevailed among the Phoenician people upon the 
eastern shores of the Mediterranean sea, upon the 
coast of north-western Africa and throughout the 
entire west and north-western portions of Europe. 
They were sun worshipers, offering infants and 
full grown human victims to appease the wrath 
and conciliate the favor of their god. And we 
have farther seen that that strange people called 
the Incas, built outdoor temples of standing stones, 
and upon the entrance to their cemeteries engraved 
the effigies of the same god worshiped in Central 
America, and in so large a portion of the eastern 
world. 

So we think we may say, with entire confidence, 
that it w^as known to many learned men in ancient 
times that there were settlements upon the conti- 
nent of America, and that the dreams of the 
Western Islands of the Blest, and of the gardens of 
the Hesperides, rested upon most substantial facts. 
Modern scholars, looking at the matter casually, 
have allowed themselves to conclude that, because 
these discoveries were made at a very early period 
in the history of the world, by a people who were 
unable to build their ships according to the rules of 
modern science, and were compeled to navigate 
stormy oceans without the aid of steam, and prob- 
ably without the aid of the mariner's compass, 
could never have navigated wide seas and stormy 
oceans . 

But how baseless this idea is found to be, when 
we come to see how easily and successfully the 
Phoenician people traversed northern, western and 
eastern oceans, and brought home the products of 
the whole world to enrich themselves and the 
peoples among whom Providence had fixed their 
destinies ! And how strangely such a suggestion 



28 



sounds when addressed to the understanding of 
peoples who have seen again and again the boister- 
ous Atlantic traversed from continent to continent 
by three men, two men, and even a single man, in 
an open boat ! So that the origin of this people, who 
were so conspicuous at one time in Central Ameri- 
ca, is certainly found to have been of the Phoeni- 
cians from Tyre, Sidon or Aridas or from Tharshish 
or Carthage or the settlements towards the west. 
The settlement of these countries must have been 
very early, and their location must have been 
guarded by all the pains and penalties so graphic- 
ally described in the ancient authors which we 
have quoted. Intercourse with Central America 
from the east must have ceased before the discovery 
of letters, for nowhere that we have discovered 
throughout the extent of the American settlements 
has a letter been found of any form whether C uni- 
form, Greek, Roman, Hebrew or Phoenician. 
These western' settlers must have been entirely 
ignorant of Egyptian hieroglyphics, for the figures 
upon their walls show the invention of a system of 
hieroglyphics more complicated than anywhere else 
discovered, and which no Champollion has yet been 
able to translate. The human mind was not dor- 
mant here but its discoveries are utterly lost to 
mankind. It will be asked what has become of 
this Central American population who wrought the 
works in question \ This can only be answered 
from conjecture. The number of actual settlers 
from the east were doubtless few. In erecting the 
structures which have been so much admired and 
wondered at, they doubtless used the labors of un- 
told thousands of the aboriginal inhabitants, appeal- 
ing perhaps to their fears and desires to conciliate 
the favor of that God, whose terrors made the 



29 



Phoenecian priests such an irresistable power over 
the nations in the west and north of Europe. 

But if for a moment superstition lost its terrors, 
this little flock of more intelligent incomers were 
powerless to resist the avenging hands of the mil- 
lion aboriginal barbarians. But we are not en- 
gaged in discussing the mode in which this people 
became extinct, but choose to confine ourselves to 
the questions, who were they, and where did they 
come from ? We say without hesitation, that when 
Columbus parted from Palos in Spain, he sailed 
from a Phoenician city, in Phoenician vessels, 
manned by Phoenician crews to rediscover worlds 
that the Phoenician ancestors of these men had 
known and settled not less than three thousand 
years before. We believe that traditions had al- 
ways existed in Spain, whose blood up to the Ebro 
is almost purely Phoenician, of these western 
worlds discovered by their fathers. No nation north 
of Spain could be induced to give any considerable 
attention to the arguments and solicitations of Col- 
umbus. True, Ferdinand and Isabella were of 
northern blood, red haired Goths, but their northern 
blood had been nourished for a thousand years upon 
the hillsides of Northern Spain, and they had be- 
come Spaniards in fact, with all Spanish beliefs and 
tendencies. Beyond all question Columbus took 
into account the Norwegian and Icelandic voyages 
and the voyage of Madoc with his Welsh brethren. 
But Columbus knew that those voyages only claimed 
to relate to lands lying west and north-west of the 
Straits of Gibraltar. But when Columbus unfurled 
his sails outside these Straits, in latitude thirty-five, 
he made no effort to find the lands claimed to have 
been discovered by the Icelanders, Norwegians or 
Welsh, but directed his course to a point from fifteen 



30 



to twenty degrees farther south, and thus reopened 
to the knowledge of the world what should have 
been the happy islands of the west and the storied 
gardens of the Hesperides. We make no doubt 
that the Ineas of Peru were brought to that country 
by the ships of the same Phoenician people. But 
the Incas were very few in number, and came to 
Peru with mechanical knowledge and the knowl- 
edge of pottery far in advance of that possessed by 
the settlers in Central America, and their works 
initiated for the purpose of improving water courses 
and constructing roads were far more beneficial to 
mankind than the temples erected to Baal in Cen- 
tral America, although the Incas, though more in- 
telligent than the settlers in Central America, were 
not yet emancipated from belief in that heathen 
god. Manco Capac, the first Inca, may have been 
left, for aught we know, by Solomon's fleets from 
Eziongeber, when in search of rosewood, mahogany, 
and gold, and may have been one of those skilled 
mechanics that built Solomon's Temple, and con- 
structed the basins for it, and thus have become 
enlightened in religious matters, although he had 
not yet advanced so far as to entirely abandon the 
worship of Baal. 

We are not unaware that Peruvian tradition 
introduces Capac into Peru at a much later period, 
but no confidence can be placed in dates suggested 
by a people utterly unacquainted with letters or 
figures, and we make no suggestion as to the exact 
time when the first Inca showed himself in Peru. 
It may be asked what we are to say in regard to the 
storied Atlantis, and especially, what shall we say 
to the fancies of Ignatius Donnelly, who has writ- 
ten such a beautiful romance in regard to that 
island supposed by him to have existed, and have 



31 



been the actual birthplace of man. Our reply is that 
Central America was the only true Atlantis ; and 
that Atlantis sunk in the ocean only when its dis- 
coverers became weakened in the face of the bar- 
barous people who surrounded them and lost their 
supremacy in the commercial world among the 
nations. Beyond what was true of Central America, 
Atlantis was a dream of fancy at an age of the 
world when fancy supplied the place of facts to an 
uninstructed people. 



N OTE . 

I am under strong obligations to Mr. George R, 
Howell, Archivist of the New York State Library, for 
the aid he has given me in selecting from ancient Greek 
and Roman authors their substantial statements in regard 
to what they considerered in their day to have been 
discoveries in the western world. 



